


fine

by threadoflife



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hallucinations, John hallucinates Sherlock, M/M, POV Second Person, Post-Episode: s02e03 The Reichenbach Fall, but John is just fine!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-24
Updated: 2017-09-01
Packaged: 2018-10-23 11:56:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10718889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/threadoflife/pseuds/threadoflife
Summary: When Sherlock is gone, you're fine.You're absolutely fine.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> random angsting... http://wssh-watson.tumblr.com/post/159891377717/wssh-watson-it-will-get-easier-she-tells-you
> 
> might elaborate still on this

It will get easier, she tells you one night. The loss. It will get easier.

You’re sitting on the couch together, watching telly. She had a busy day, you were home early. You dined over candlelight. The program on the telly is one of the less worse ones.

Still she tilts her face, watches you from the corner of her eye, and tells you this: it will get easier.

The loss.

There is no reason for her to say it. You let her know.

I’m fine, you say. You emphasise your half-smile by squeezing her hand that is in your lap. Fine.

*

It isn’t even really a lie.

It’s just a statement of fact: you are fine. You are always fine. It is not a lie.

*

You are looking better these days, Ella says to you during your next appointment. Your relationship is good for you.

You suppose so, yes. It’s nice, coming home to someone who is bearable and pleasant after a day of work; who lets you punch walls in the next room and does not force you into talking about it; who smiles at you, Sunday morning over breakfast, or over lunch if you’ve slept in. It’s nice.

It’s nice, you say. Yeah. It’s good.

Ella is unable to distinguish between your smiles. To her, the thin-lipped one looks like any other.

It’s easy, getting through the days by smiling at people who think you are smiling at them when actually you want to inflict bodily harm on them or drown yourself in alcohol again. It’s a tie, many days.

Not that it matters. There is no one left who can distinguish between your smiles anymore.

Maybe Mary is right. It gets easier, the loss: the loss of yourself.

You slide from one smile into the next like they’re all the same, too. You’re a shadow behind a curtain, dumb, invisible, because the cruel sunlight of grief from outside shines right through you, eradicating the dark spot you occupy under there until there is only empty space left.

Good, Ella says. She says it with a smile. That’s good.

Yeah, it is, you say. Good. Very good.

Maybe if you smile hard enough, you will only have one smile left. Maybe then you are just John, any John at all.

The thought is good. Nice.

Average Johns did not lose their best friends and the most important person in their lives through suicide.

Maybe if you are any John at all, your memories will not be the same.

You smile back at Ella, thinking of bright, burning sunlight bleaching shadows.

*

The point is, when you say you’re fine, you are fine. It isn’t a lie.

It is, however, not quite truth, either.

The facts of your wellbeing do not come in values of truth or falsehood, not any longer.

You are fine: completely fine.

Not being fine never was an option.

Sherlock gave you your life back, even if he is gone. You are doing your best not throwing that gift away. It is the last gift Sherlock left you with.

So you are fine, when you kneel on the bathroom floor and taste tears among the vomit you retch into the toilet, the sting of alcohol still in your throat. You are fine when you hallucinate your dead friend and tell him you still love him while you wait for your girlfriend to come home. You are fine when that girlfriend forces food down your throat after you went two days without.

You are fine.

Sherlock is gone, and you are just fine.

There is nothing else to be, now.

*

Mary is wrong, though.

The loss of him never does get easier.

You don’t want it to. You want it to stick and fester and infect you.

At least that way, Sherlock stays; that way, Sherlock is still here.

*

Sherlock talks to you.

Not always. He is silent a lot of the time, like he was when he was alive. When you are at work, you stand around or lean against the table or look out the window to leave your chair unoccupied–free for Sherlock to sit in, which he does most of the time when he deigns to be with you at work. (It isn’t often. The daily routine of a GP is boring, unexciting to him. You completely sympathise: but Sherlock doesn’t get to complain, anymore. He’s the reason you’re here every day at all.)

Sherlock sits in your chair when you’re at work. You glance at him when your patient explains their ills to you, and the smile on your face is the first genuine of the day when you see him sit there with a disdainful, impatient expression glaring right back at you. Maybe he’s glaring at you for keeping him trapped here; it’s likely. Sherlock never did like the consequences of his own actions much.

You leave the chair to him because inevitably, at one point, he clasps his hands together under his chin and disappears into his Mind Palace. Then he is silent for hours, if for hours he remains.

Your feet ache, after a while: making space for your hallucination to sit in your chair leaves your feet aching. It is a worthy ache, a good ache.

Other times, Sherlock spits out deductions as soon as a patient enters a room. “Look at her feet, John!” he bellows, impatient and excited. “Look at her gait! What does it tell you?”

“His medical record is very suggestive of hypochondria,” he murmurs into your ear when he leans down and reads alongside you. “Don’t you see?”

You do see. You also know what her gait is saying. You see and know all these things because Sherlock is you: this is merely your own intelligence at work, consumed by an externalised madness.

Logically knowing this does not make it any easier.

It’s fine, anyway. You aren’t very clever after all: you should have seen the roof coming, and you didn’t. What a lousy doctor, and friend, and whatever else you were.

“Do you remember that first night at Angelo’s?” Sherlock asks you when you pack your bag after the day is over and the last patient gone. He is standing before the window, gazing out. Outside is probably full of things other than John’s meaningless and dull little Dr office.

The thought makes you chuckle, a little. You aren’t even enough for Sherlock’s hallucination.

“Yeah, I remember,” you say after a moment of taking a deep breath. This particular topic is never easy for you to handle. “What of it?”

“You flirted with me.” Sherlock says it like an observation, like he says anything else. Like a fact: Sherlock observes only facts. He says it like it doesn’t matter. It didn’t. “Imagine I had agreed.”

And here it is: this is you. Imagine–flights of fantasy–this is you, not him. He never indulged this part of himself. (Not that you know, anyway. And it turns out you did not know him well at all.)

“Imagine what?” you ask, hoarse. You don’t want to talk about it, but Sherlock does. So you talk about it.

Now Sherlock turns to look over his shoulder at you. His eyes are bright, focused, but there is a sadness to them that makes your throat ache. “Imagine I had agreed,” he says, “and you had been my lover. Lovers should notice these things, yes? Issues of mental health or self-destructive behaviour. Lovers should notice and stop these things.”

That part now–you know this, you know this!–is all Sherlock: a certain naivety of character, a certain sweetness. God. Christ, Sherlock. Oh, Sherlock.

“You didn’t notice and you didn’t stop me,” Sherlock continues as if he had not just dropped an emotional bomb and your hands aren’t shaking. You deserve this slow, creeping pain behind your sternum, because Sherlock is right. You let him continue. “And there is nothing to suggest you would have done either, had you been my lover.”

His voice is largely without inflection save for a pondering, thoughtful tone, as if this is nothing to him. It isn’t and wasn’t. Maybe if it had been you would have been lovers.

“So really,” Sherlock says, “it is better we were not lovers, to save ourselves additional pain.”

You nod, mechanically. It feels like if your fingers, tense and tight and full of quivering rage, move a bit to the side they will tear your bag apart: another externalisation of your issues. It would reflect the ache within, behind your sternum, a slow tear, precise and deep.

When you blink next, Sherlock, now wordless, only looks at you as if he knows: that being lovers or not being lovers never changed a thing for you. You’d still be here, hallucinating him with a desperate pain like this, if you had been lovers. You would have grieved the loss of being able to kiss and touch and hold him, yes, but it would have been the same.

You’d still have been here, like this, as you are now.

Sherlock looks at you as if he knows.

Of course he does. Sherlock always knows.

It’s fine that Sherlock gets the only good parts like your intelligence these days.

The only good parts you had were all (for) Sherlock, anyway. He is gone now.

He is gone now, and you are here, like this.


	2. moving on (holding on)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is Mary now.
> 
> You take her to his grave to tell him you're moving on.
> 
> Sherlock knows better, as always.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am so sorry for misplacing this. this is actually chapter one like ???? i wrote this AFTER the nominal ch. 1, and don't know how to put it back into proper order ugh
> 
> just in case of confusion
> 
> sorry!

It isn’t really goodbye.

The grave is silent before you, as of course it would be. For the first time, however, quite not of course, all inside you is silent: your pulse does not quicken, your thoughts neither race nor multiply, your stomach does not churn, and your hand does not twitch. You are as still and stiff as at parade rest, even if you are in fact holding someone’s hand. You are usually at parade rest upon visiting this grave, before the loudness of your body and ill mind take over—also your usual in front of this grave—and force your knees to the damp earth before sunrise or tears into your eyes in the middle of the day.

There was never any silence inside you, or around you, whenever you visited this grave. Now there is.

It’s wrong, and there is nothing you can do to change it.

It isn’t goobye. It can’t be: the grief has substituted the marrow of your bones, the loss has become your blood. Grief for Sherlock, the loss of Sherlock. Grief holds you up, loss makes you function; Sherlock has become even more vital for your wellbeing in his death than ever before, which is ironic. It is an irony he would appreciate, you think, idly, talking, as ever, to Sherlock, inside your head.

When Mary squeezes your hand after the third minute of mute, unmoving staring at the black headstone, you almost flinch. You’ve forgotten she’s there, you realise, that last minute. You ought to feel bad about it and feel mostly bad for not actually wanting to feel bad.

“Yes,” you say for no reason at all. You clear your throat. “All right.”

It is a cold, damp day. In the headstone, your reflections are distorted blobs of colour. Mary’s—the blob of her scarf and her long coat—make you ache. It’s the first emotion upon entering the graveyard. It’s too silent here. There are too many people, although it is just you and Mary as far as the eye can see.

You don’t usually come here with anyone else.

I’m moving on, you’re thinking, hard, emphatic, sudden, forceful. I’m moving on. You repeat it: I—am—moving—on.

Sherlock says nothing. He hasn’t said anything in a while. It doesn’t trouble you. He’s never talked to you when Mary was around before.

I’m moving on, you think, and there is a distinct lack of accompanying thoughts (“Moving on from what? It’s not like we ever were anything, so there isn’t anything to move on from, and anyway you wouldn’t care, and—”) that usually torture you. There is no need for them, now. There is just the bleak sky, someone else’s hand in yours, and your pallid face with its lost weight and sunken eyes spelling the bold, stark truth: you are moving on. Trying to, at least. You are moving on from what is the greatest love of your life to a lesser, necessary love, and you are doing so out of self-defence, out of survival, out of loneliness. You are moving on from Sherlock Holmes, who, despite possibly never having felt anything of the sort for you, and despite his definitely miserable handling of the object, holds your metaphorical heart in his hands of bone, under the earth.

You’re moving on.

It isn’t really goodbye, because it could never be, but it’s respect. It’s respect, and an apology, and an explanation. He deserves to see you don’t throw the life he has given back to you away like a sack of potatoes; this gift is worth more to you now than before. He deserves to be told personally.

You don’t want his blessing. You don’t need it. He never would have given it, anyway.

You don’t know what you’re doing here.

You’re moving on.

“All right,” you repeat, to yourself, to Mary, to anyone, again. You jerk your head in a tight, brief nod, give Mary a fleeting smile and turn on your heel.

You need to get out of here.

You’re moving on, and you don’t know what you’re doing here, and clearly your supply of miracles has drained, emptied, gone dry like the rib cage with your heart in it two years ago.

You leave the graveyard with someone else’s hand in yours, and there still is no sign, no word. Not even one. You knew there wouldn’t be, of course, but—

but—

“You are not moving on,” Sherlock tells you later that night as you nurse your third glass of alcohol. Mary is asleep in the next room, and you’re trying to escape the ghosts in your head.

Sherlock is leaning against the wall, observing you. His face is hollow, his eyes heavy. You’d like his eyes to be heavy, so they are. The truth is you begin to forget the precise shade of his eyes these days, and that—that…

You take a deep drink of the vodka.

“You are not moving on,” Sherlock repeats, more quietly. “You are holding on.”

“I know,” you mutter into the glass, under your breath. “You smart wanker, I know.”

Sherlock smiles at you, slow and sad. He comes to sit beside you, and the phantom press of his thigh against yours—the lack of warmth notwithstanding—elicits the second emotion of that day: a painful clenching in your chest, like an iron fist squeezing your heart. You know he isn’t sitting beside you, yet he is. He is always sitting or standing beside you.

That’s the problem.

“You’ll do it,” Sherlock tells you, full of confidence and false bravado. “Lying to yourself and self-denial are your strongest skills.”

There is nothing to do but to laugh wetly as you stare at his thigh that isn’t there.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With Mary gone, you don't really know what to tell your therapist.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a brief little indulgence over how i see john's emotional state in tld/tfp.
> 
> yes, i think he's a victim of mary's covert abuse. (hence the duplicate mind marys.) see my ramblings on tumblr.

“I don’t feel I deserve it.”

You are, for once, honest. No, not for once: with this new therapist you’ve somehow been more honest and authentic than you’ve ever been with Ella. Or maybe it isn’t down to the person, maybe it’s only that now you’re even closer to hell than you’ve ever been before—after Afghanistan, and, incredibly, Sherlock—and you don’t have the strength to bullshit anymore. The time for fake is over. You can’t bring yourself to.

You don’t entirely care anymore. When you hate yourself to an extreme amount anyway, there comes a point when it doesn’t get worse; in fact, it gets better, because indifference settles inside you. You don’t care anymore, and all there is is a sweet, vast blankness.

In this blankness, you gaze past your therapist’s shoulder.

Your new therapist doesn’t take her time, or soften her words; she goes right for the kill. You’d hate her for it if all your hate weren’t already used up for auto-aggression.

“You can’t fault yourself for not loving someone,” she says, directly and bluntly. “For not loving someone enough, or at all. That is not your failure. You don’t need to feel guilty for a lack of emotions, even more so in the context of a prior emotional trauma.”

“Prior emotional trauma,” you mutter and snort into the heel of your hand. “Yeah, what trauma was that?”

“I am not talking about Mr Holmes,” your therapist says sharply. “I am addressing the emotional abuse your late wife put you through, both actively and passively. The emotional abuse you fail to acknowledge.”

Resolutely, you keep staring past her shoulder. Behind her chair, there is Mary; she is there twice. On the left side, leaning forward on the chair and glancing at you with a beseeching, grieving expression on her face, Mary is crying; on the right side of the chair, leaning against the wall with the curious pattern, Mary is regarding you with a passive, empty stare, something calculating in her gaze and something reptilian in the way she cocks her head just so.

At this Mary you stare, hard, desperate, your pulse speeding up dangerously. The back of your neck begins to heat up, prickles. You ignore entirely the silence of this Mary and ignore entirely the other Mary that is speaking.

“Oh, John,” the grieving Mary from the left side is saying, voice urgent and compassionate. “It’s okay you couldn’t love me enough or at all. I don’t care. I only ever wanted to be with you and you stayed with me until the end. I knew about Sherlock, I knew all the time. It was fine. It’s okay. I didn’t mind.”

To the far right, the other Mary just keeps gazing—a long, indifferent, knowing stare that scorches along the shape of your ribcage. She does not once blink.

You keep your eyes fixed on her. They grow wet. You feel your knees itch, want to get down on them before this cold, distant woman, want her forgiveness.

You’re sorry, yes, of course, but you’re even sorrier—even guiltier—that you’re not as sorry or guilty as you should be. Sorrier, guiltier, more bitter, for knowing you never loved her enough (at all?) and not caring because you keep loving, loving, and loving Sherlock anyway. For wanting more, and always having wanted more. For Sherlock, for Sherlock, for Sherlock, your stupid, deceptive heart that knows peace only with Sherlock, never with Mary.

Mary knows this. Knowing this, she keeps gazing back at you with all her indifference, all her passive loathing.

Mary will never forgive you. You know this. Knowing this, you keep gazing at her with all your desperation, all your need for ablution.

 _Trauma victim response_ , your mind whispers, tired, so tired _. A vicious cycle_.

You blink hard and fast.

The Mary to the left looks at you keenly, with all the love Mary never had in her eyes. “Living like this isn’t okay, John. You shouldn’t settle for being happy and relieved that someone, anyone, loved you at all in your life. You deserve love. You deserve to be loved by someone whom you love with all your heart, too. You don’t have to settle for someone loving you whom you didn’t love because at least that way you were loved at all. That’s self-destructive, John, and you deserve more.”

 _Bullshit_ , you think, panicked. _A load of bullshit. I deserve nothing. I’m a bad person, I should be glad Mary put up with me at all and yet here I am being in love with Sherlock and ignoring the love I had, the love I didn’t deserve and—_

To the right, the blankness in Mary’s eyes gains an edge of satisfaction. You feel it deep inside your chest, a dark, dull ache like sickness.

“Oh, John,” Mary to the left whispers before she fades, fades, leaves you with reality once more, not with daydreams.

There is no place for dreaming left.

Your therapist considers you long and hard, before she sighs. Shifting in her chair, she crosses her legs and pauses for a moment.

Then she asks, “And how is your daughter?”

You smile, thinly.

Yes, you like this therapist far more than you ever liked Ella. She asks exactly the right kind of question to incite your self-loathing even further.

Behind her shoulder, Mary silently approves.


End file.
